


Don't look back in anger (I heard you say)

by feyrelay



Series: DIEU (Daddy Issues Extended Universe) [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Christmas Angst, Denial of Feelings, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mixed Media, Pining, Playlist, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Songfic, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 14:04:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17101982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: Post-Snappening, Tony finds Peter's playlist, and it's replete with pining of epic proportions.So naturally, he makes an experiment of it. And adds his own ideas. For Christmas.CNTW because Peter and several others are dusted, and it implies Peter's in love with Tony and he's under 18





	Don't look back in anger (I heard you say)

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to the pining playlist here (with Tony's picks as well): https://open.spotify.com/user/1urx036e5iqb0ioukr2bj8yih/playlist/4WQ0pcvq8nqL7zlLBwDqbk?si=BuBzhv3bRsGXsKwb7W_JLQ

Post-Decimation and re-entry, after the dust has settled (no no no, not dust, _ash_ ), after months pass and winter encroaches and Tony has given up on the notion that anyone would have any idea how to reverse things, he grieves. It goes like this:

Tony scours the complex for any scrap of Peter he can find. It doesn’t yield much: an old, secondhand MIT shirt with holes in it, battered school library copies of _Flowers for Algernon_ and _The Outsiders_ that are packed with post-it notes, and finally a scrap of notebook paper with a fairly detailed doodle of Peter himself posing in Black Widow’s tac suit while Natasha hangs upside-down from a web, clad in blue and red, blonde hair wild with gravity. Tony scans the drawing and makes it his wallpaper on his personal laptop before he rolls it up carefully, as if it were an ancient and sacred map to hidden treasure, and overnights it to Nat’s last-known crashpad in a poster tube. He doesn’t dare crease it or put it in an envelope that might get bent.

The courier that picks it up tastefully doesn’t mention his overgrown facial hair, red eyes, or unwashed aroma. She especially doesn’t mention it after Tony digs out his wallet and hands her a crisp hundred-dollar bill. He presses it into her hand, gestures to the mail tube, and croaks, “Careful with that.”

Later, he dons the shirt (it’d been too big for the wiry, lithe teen) and devours the two books greedily in an evening, veins humming with alcohol. He even guiltily gluts himself further by paging back through and carefully peeling his favorite literary insights from the pages. (God, the kid had been so fucking smart.)

It’s nearing 4 AM by the time he’s finished playing magpie with Peter’s Am Lit homework (work that’s frightfully late now; late, late, late). The small pile of sticky papers paints Tony’s hand in a rainbow of fluorescent colors. He knows he’ll need to send the books back to May, either to keep or to give back to the school. He wouldn’t blame her either way.

Desperate for more, Tony closes his eyes in something like prayer and asks, “Did I miss anything, Fri?”

“Well, sir, there’s always the playlist!” she says, too brightly.

Because Tony’s self-preservation apparently has a sadism streak (or has sprung a leak entirely), he just tells the chirpy AI to play the mix with an impatient wave of his hand.

Tony has time to be surprised that Peter would put Billy Joel’s ‘New York State of Mind’ at the top of his playlist, before exhaustion and grief and the low voice of the piano man put him to sleep.

The next day he wakes late (late, late, late again) and drags himself through the motions of self-care, eating his toast and coffee cold because he spaced in front of the toaster for an hour. Once his ablutions are finished, Tony can’t stand to pretend he doesn’t know what will occupy his time today.

“FRIDAY, pull up Pe-,” he stops, frowns. (Drowns.)

“Yes, boss?”

“Pull up his playlist, please,” Tony sighs. He wonders if it was just the kid’s general lab mix for when he was working in there alone, or something more specific.

He must have wondered out loud, because Fri pipes up, “He made it slowly, over time. Mr. Parker had songs on his phone and he told me to save certain ones when he heard them in the lab.”

Tony hums and bites his lip. “Did he say why?”

There’s a pause, and Tony wonders if maybe he forgot to talk outside his head again.

“Maybe you should listen and answer your own questions, sir.”

\---

That’s exactly what Tony does, and for his own sanity, he treats it like an experiment and sets up a log.

_P1. New York State of Mind – Billy Joel (1976)_

After each song title and artist, Tony begins by adding the year the song was released and then makes notes of specific lyrics that might give him clues as to why Peter saved these songs. For the first song, he comes up with:

_“take a holiday from the neighborhood”_

_“on the Hudson River line, I'm in a New York state of mind”_

Tony pauses while jotting down the lyrics _“I've seen all the movie stars in their fancy cars and their limousines”._ That’s not really relevant to Peter’s life (more so his own) and as a scientist, Tony doesn’t want to muddy the waters.

However, some instinct slides across his shoulders, weighty, and zings up his neck to flush fully into his face, tickling the bridge of Tony’s nose as he thinks. His mind skitters away from the feeling that the song is calling out to him, begging for a response.

What would he even say back? (Tony scratches his nose, pushes up his glasses, delays.)

Well, he should try to find something that is either thematically or sonically similar. Preferably something close to contemporary with the song he’s pairing it to, but not necessarily.

He double-checks and yeah, Sting wrote that album in 1991 after his father died, but the mellifluous piano in the background and the melancholy meanderings of a disillusioned man go nicely with Billy Joel, he thinks.

_T1. Why Should I Cry For You? – Sting (1991)_

He writes the song details out, lettering and numbering carefully so as not to imply in his notes that this song was Peter’s pick. Tony needs to own this. (It hurts.)

It feels like psychography, like something else is holding his hand, as the hard-hitting lyrics of the last part of the song flow into the log book. Fuck, fuck, why-

_“Why must I think of you? Why must I? Why should I? Why should I cry for you? Why would you want me to? And what would it mean to say, 'I loved you in my fashion?' What would be true?”_

Tony slams his notes closed, cover nearly smashing his own hand that had just been writing, and goes in search of a drink.

\---

The next day he masochistically marches into the lab, intent on moving on to the next song. There are eleven in total, he knows, and he won’t be able to focus until he’s dealt with this. (Done and dusted.)

_P2. Come Pick Me Up – Ryan Adams (2000)_

He writes, having to Google the year.

_“I wish you would: Come pick me up, Take me out, Fuck me up…”_

Tony’s startled at the expletive, not that he ever held back around Peter or that Peter never cursed, but it just pours down his back, cold and unexpected, all the same. Tony has to listen to the song twice, since this is neither his nor Peter’s preferred genre, and in the end he settles on lyrics not because the words stand out to him, but because of the way the singer forces them out, something between a whine and an accusation. Peter wouldn’t have picked this song without hearing that, he knows. Hesitating, he adds the last lines, just because of that quality coming through in the singer’s voice:

_“I wish you'd make up my bed so I could make up my mind; Try it for sleeping instead, maybe you'll rest sometime. Oh, I wish I could.”_

Fuck, for such a melodious song, it sounds tortured. Tony rushes to soothe.

_T2. Faith – George Michael (1987)_

He’s off on the year again, showing his age, but Tony thinks as he listens to it, that it’s a good song for letting someone down gently. Firm, but not insulting. He doesn’t bother with lyrics; everyone knows this one. Besides, he wants to hear what’s next.

It’s worse. (He bears witness.)

_P3. The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot – Brand New (2003)_

_“You are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins. Call me a safe bet; I'm betting I'm not.”_

Tony swallows painfully. (You weren’t vile, Peter. I never wanted you to think that.)

He’d rejected him once, told the kid (rightfully, righteously) that he was too young and he’d get over his crush. Tony won’t invalidate the angst he caused Pete by countering with a happy song. Instead he matches the tone, if not the decade, of Peter’s choice, respecting it in the only way he has left.

_T3. Pictures of You – The Cure (1989)_

_“Remembering you how you used to be: slow-drowned. You were angels, so much more than everything. Hold for the last time then slip away quietly, open my eyes, but I never see anything…”_

Yeah. That’s enough for today.

\---

It’s almost Christmas, which is why no one expects Tony to do anything but mope for two weeks. He has the time to apply himself fully to his task. (His burden.)

FRIDAY doesn’t even ask him for instructions anymore, when he enters the lab, she just pulls up the playlist.

He tries not to think about that.

_P4. Like the Dawn – The Oh Hellos (2012)_

_“And like the dawn you woke the world inside of me. You were the brightest shade of sun when I saw you… at last, and you will surely be the death of me. But how could I have known?”_

The female singer’s vocals soar, smooth and high, but the weight of the words’ meaning crushes Tony like so much stone. Compounding his guilt, Tony knows his response (which comes lightning-fast, flashing up from his stomach, bile-driven) is more about him than it is about Peter. At least he’s much closer in year this time.

_T4. Dark Come Soon – Tegan and Sara (2007)_

He thinks about choosing lyrics, even pulls up Genius on his phone to try and pick some for the log, but the truth is it’s the whole damn song, every word.

I’m sorry, he thinks, but then again. (Sorry doesn’t cut it.)

He pours himself a drink, just so he can carry on. That doesn’t cut it, either.

_P5. Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been – Relient K (2004)_

Another song from the aughts. Tony remembers making a playlist for Peter, early on, trying to teach him about older music. He’d alternated music he liked with songs he knew Peter would know. Who knows if it worked or not? Mostly Tony’d wanted to at least try to educate the only post-millennial in his life. (Vision doesn’t count.)

Selfishly, he’d desired that Peter should want to be in the lab _with_ Tony more and more often. He had wanted to dance a silly old man dance to AC/DC, needle dropped and FRIDAY blasting at her best, with Peter watching. With no audience, what’s the point?

_“Stop right there, that's exactly where I lost it, see that line? Well I never should have crossed it. Stop right there, well I never should have said that; it's the very moment that I wish that I could take back.”_

Continuing the conversation he’s having, apparently, with Peter’s emo ghost, Tony selects something just on the cusp of the new millennium. Released in early 2001 and having garnered plenty of Grammy buzz, Tony thinks it’s a callback to a time from before the world at large and New York in particular went up in flames (and ash and drywall and smoke and steel and jet fuel and _blood;_ Tony was there, he knew it had been history’s most sinister ticker tape parade, _fuck-_ )

_T5. Drops of Jupiter – Train (2001)_

He hurries to scrawl, cutting off the memories. A whole country’s confidence and sense of self burnt to rubble, buried, and still ( _still!_ ) Tony had needed his own personal wake up call years later. 9/11 not’s good enough for Tony Stark, no sir, he’d just fucked off back to Malibu and channeled his fear into making more weapons, because _that_ had helped the situation so much.

_“Now that she's back from that soul vacation, tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey.  
She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo, reminds me that there's room to grow, hey, hey, yeah.”_

Peter had been practically a newborn then, had never known anything but fear and still was brave.

Tony drinks to that.

\---

The next day, the winter solstice, the day is short and the night is long, but Peter’s next choices are lighter and teasing and they carry him through the dark like a menorah made of sound.

_P6. Cooler Than Me – Mike Posner (2009)_

Apparently, it came out in 2009, and boy does it sound like it. But he hears what Peter’s trying so hard to tell him, all the same.

_“You got designer shades just to hide your face, and you wear 'em around like you're cooler than me.”_

Fair enough, and.

_“Shh, I got you all figured out: You need everyone's eyes just to feel seen.”_

Hadn’t that been exactly his train of thought yesterday? Tony may have been wrong to assume Peter didn’t have the emotional maturity to have more than a crush on him. He’d certainly _known_ him.

As an apology, he picks a song he knows Peter would’ve liked. It’s fast, zany, raucous. A little naughty.

(“I’ll get you into penetration, the gender of a generation...” he sings in his head, but censors. Doesn’t write it down. Feels like a horrible scientist for it, but a better mentor.)

_T6. Can’t Stop – Red Hot Chili Peppers (2002)_

Peter would’ve liked the whole damn thing, would’ve played it on repeat for days the way he did with ‘Blitzkreig Bop’ one weekend. Tony doesn’t bother separating out strands from the singer’s stream of consciousness style; he finds the words indivisible from one another. (What ‘science’ is this, anyway?)

_P7. Out of My League – Fitz & the Tantrums (2013)_

Tony smiles at the title, thinks he knows where this is going. He’s not wrong but he’s not right either (nothing new) and writing the lyrics that he _knows_ Peter found resonating, well, it hurts him.

_“You were out of my league, got my heartbeat racing. If I die don't wake me, cause you are more than just a dream.”_

Still, the faux-eighties sound and the tempo are _so_ Peter, and it’s enough to keep him going for now. He’s raw, but knows he has to respond. He won’t leave Peter echoing in the dark.

_T7. Run Baby Run – Garbage (2005)_

_“Run my baby run my baby run, run from the noise of the street and the loaded gun. S’too late for solutions to solve in the setting sun, so run my baby run my baby run. Find out who you are before you regret it, 'cause life is so short there's no time to waste it.”_

Tony realizes he’s tearing up a little and he stumbles back away from the bench, terrified of staining the log book with droplets. He wishes he’d never thought to interlope with his own song choices, suddenly thinking in sharp contrast to his earlier desire to keep up the conversation. He wishes he’d never interrupted Peter at all, in life or in death. Tony should’ve, from the moment he met him, let Peter just talk and talk and dance and do and build and be, forever-and-ever-amen. Why, why had Tony ever wasted a moment with Peter on himself, on banter, on bluster, on reprimand? He should’ve been drinking him in, building him up, sharing him on the screens in Times Square until the whole world was filled to the brim with goodness. ( _Christ._ )

He can’t sit here anymore. Instead, he makes a phone call. It’s business hours, somewhere. Screw it.

\---

The next day, Tony actually showers and shaves/trims/gets dressed in order to make himself into something presentable. He dons his most opaque, most outlandish shades. No one needs to see his eyes.

The huge fir tree gets delivered with a crew ready to move it into place. Thor helps, so it takes about half the time that Tony had planned for. They use a small cherry-picker to string fairy lights all around it, red and blue and a warm, golden white.

Tony watches as long as he can and then goes back down to the lab to isolate himself. Pepper watches him go, holds off the media, and he’s grateful. She can explain the initiative to everyone.

They don’t talk, anymore. FRIDAY and Peter’s ghost are his constant companions.

_P8. Sleep With Me – Angelfish (1994)_

Well. Pepper wouldn’t want to see this, anyway.

_“When you walked in the room and you smiled that smile, I was doomed; it hit me so hard. Some things are dead and buried. Some things are dead and gone, but you, you stay with me. Just carry on. Sleep with me. Some things are dead and buried; some things just carry on like you.”_

Tony takes another shower. A cold one.

Then he comes back and pours his angst into the notebook. He doesn’t leave any notes just circles and underlines and goes over the letters until the paper practically tears, feeling mad with it.

_T8. Losing My Religion – R.E.M. (1991)_

\---

The next day is Christmas Eve Eve, the 23rd.

The morning shows pick up the story, and he’s called everything from a sentimental, resource-wasting fool to a beacon of humanity. He mutes the TV and heads down to the lab. The so-called ‘ornaments’ will start arriving any time now, and he wants his ( _theirs_ ) to be right at the very top. He’s vain like that.

_P9. Little Talks – Of Monsters and Men (2011)_

_“I don't like walking around this old and empty house. So hold my hand, I'll walk with you my dear.”_

Tony knows that’s the part Peter liked, because he actually had been privy to its addition to the mix. He hadn’t known it at the time, but he remembers walking into the lab one Saturday evening and hearing Peter singing at the top of his lungs, tapping along to the beat with his palm on the edge of a lab table. It’d been that particular lyric and then silence, Peter having signaled for Fri to cut the music as soon as he’d seen Tony watching him. Pete had said, “FRIDAY, that one please.” And that had been that.

It’s coming back to him now, that Peter had burnt his fingers soldering shortly thereafter and fled upstairs, telling Tony to keep going. It makes him sad now to think that in the midst of singing along to a song about being lonely, Peter’d wanted to hide from him. He’d wanted someone to walk with him, but at that moment, not Tony. He wonders if Peter had gone up to his room and listened to the rest of the song, alone. Maybe that happened, but maybe it didn’t.

Which would be worse, if he had felt he had to listen to it alone? Or if he’d never finished it at all?

_T9. **See above**_

_“You're gone, gone, gone away; I watched you disappear. All that's left is a ghost of you. Now we're torn, torn, torn apart, there's nothing we can do. Just let me go, we'll meet again soon.”_

The only reason he pushes on at that, is because he feels the need to finish something. To do right by something. Besides, he still has to construct the damned thing.

_P10. Northern Downpour – Panic at the Disco (2009)_

It’s another shock of sense memory, and okay, he’ll take that drink now. He remembers Peter showing him some black and white music video, all pretty boys trying too hard, playing at vandals. It’s the kind of thing Peter himself might do, web a message across the Brooklyn Bridge, playing a high-stakes game of Charlotte’s Web, and. Well. It hadn’t worked out for Charlotte either.

Tony listens dutifully, familiar by now with what kinds of lyrics Peter likes. (Liked.)

_“And then she said she can't believe genius only comes along in storms of fabled foreign tongues. Tripping eyes and flooded lungs, northern downpour sends its love.”_

Or maybe he’d liked the end better?

_“Hey moon, please forget to fall down. Hey moon, don't you go down. You are at the top of my lungs,  
drawn to the ones who never yawn.”_

Tony should’ve paid more attention when Peter was trying to show him this, instead of thinking about how much the group had looked like a Beatles cover band.

It makes him sick, now. What had he said at the time?

“Nothing new here, kid. Recording artists have really taken ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ to heart.”

What a dick.

_T10. Take Me to Church – Hozier (2013)_

Tony remembers this music video, even though he rarely catches them, because it had been the sort of thing Pepper commented on over breakfast (and did he even eat today?) to try and draw him back into the world. “Did you see that video with the gay couple? Really emotional. Political. Powerful.”

He forgets exactly which word she used. Something that felt lacking at the time, he’s sure. Pepper knows about his past with men, and sometimes she used to try to relate, bring it up, act supportive even though between the two of them, they had made up probably one of the most privileged couples on the planet. Both of them passed for heterosexual and erased the rest. Airbrushed it all away. “Just a phase.”

_“If I'm a pagan of the good times, my lover's the sunlight. To keep the Goddess on my side, she demands a sacrifice; to drain the whole sea, get something shiny…”_

Well, none of that matters now. Tony goes to bed hungry.

\---

Christmas Eve dawns harshly, cold and clear and far too bright. It’s probably because he’s slept so late. He only wakes because FRIDAY announces that the same courier as before is here, ready to drop off the package containing the pair of elements that May had gathered up for him, begrudgingly. He does the downloads to his own set of three and checks everything over, before he assembles the five-point star. He gets properly washed and dressed on autopilot, content to finish up the logbook in the meantime as he waits.

_P11. The Scientist – Coldplay (2002)_

Tony knows which of these lyrics are his (tell me you love me, come back and haunt me…).

But this is not for him.

_“I was just guessing at numbers and figures, pulling your puzzles apart. Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart.”_

Peter, he knows in his heart, chose these. He writes them down in the lab log and then wonders how recently the song had been added to the mix in the first place. It’s the last one he ever added.

Peter had been in the lab the weekend before Thanos, pumped about his upcoming field trip to the Museum of Modern Art. Was it then that he heard this, thought of Tony, and added it to his collection?

Had Peter still been in love with him in that last moment? Or was there only room for fear? ( _I’m sorry._ )

Before he can think too hard about it, Pepper knocks at the glass door of the lab, opens it, and says gently, “It’s time.”

They leave the building and wade through the crowd assembled, which is packed into every green and/or public space the compound grounds can offer.

The tree is lit up, the multicolored lights glinting off a thousand silver CDs, a multitude of USB drives, even a surprising number of cassettes. He’d put out a statement saying the Avengers’ tree would be decorated this year with any secondhand serenade someone wanted to send him, to honor the fallen, the dusted, the as-of-yet undelivered. People had really come through, from all over the world. In lieu of a tree skirt, the area under the branches is blanketed with a layer of LPs, EPs, and 45s. Some are in sleeves and others are naked, vinyl clouding in the cold. There’s a tall ladder of stairs craning up to the top of the tree. He breathes, breath misting in the freeze.

As Tony approaches, the crowd starts to take notice, and the noise level rises. Someone hands him a wireless microphone. He climbs the ladder, and feels hot and cold all over as he cradles the set of five golden flash drives in the other hand. One had Peter’s secret mix on it (with Tony’s additions), sure, but another had the music he’d listened to with Ned and MJ. A third held the songs May and Pete (and Ben, before) had sung around the apartment. FRIDAY had cloned Peter’s phone and found a playlist he had used in between crimes during Spider-Man patrol to keep himself pumped. When she’d finished cataloging that, the AI had shyly asked if there was enough room in the star for the playlist Peter had made for her; they were all songs with her name in them. They danced in the lab to them sometimes.

He’s made a perfect five-pointed star. (To: Peter, From: Tony, with love.)

“Hey, folks. Most wonderful time of the year, am I right,” Tony’s flat voice booms over the crowd. He winces. “I set all this up to try and celebrate the people we’ve lost. Music is the one thing everyone has, from rich to poor, whether it’s a box seat at the symphony or a favorite song that wafts up from your downstairs neighbor’s radio. It’s something that we enjoy with others, certainly, when we dance or (his eyes take in the children gathered all around) when we, uh, love each other, or sing happy birthday. It’s something we enjoy secretly, when we find that one lyric that acts as a balm to the soul, or the one that lights our limbic systems up with joy. We share it on social media, or make it ourselves, or pretend to do so with air guitars, air pianos, air drums, and so on. We sign it to one another when hearing is not enough, record it and replay it when once is not enough, and tattoo it on ourselves when our skin is too blank and we need to remember the way certain things feel.”

He coughs, notices Nat and Banner and Steve standing together in the crowd, and collects himself. He nods at the stack of vintage records in Cap’s hands, catching the other man’s eye before continuing.

“We’ve all lost people to the Decimation. Frankly, no matter what the math says, I feel that it was more than our fair share. And I can’t tell you how much I want to make it all better, but until that time, we come together here to remember what is lost, but never forgotten. We lost people, not just because of who they were to us, but we also lost who they were secretly, in their quietest moments. We lost the potential people who they might have become and all the songs they might have sung, all the words they might have said or written that would make a difference to someone else. We lost all those little links in the chain that connect us, often through no more than one or two degrees of separation, to people whom we’d never think of otherwise. And that will not stand. It won’t.”

He finds May Parker in the crowd, near Pepper and Happy and Rhodey, and he holds her wet gaze. Ned Leeds and Michelle Jones stand back behind her, and neither of them are quite dry-eyed, either.

“Peter Parker was my favorite person on this earth, and when he left it for the first time, following me to fight on Xandar, he was scared and he was brave. He was tired, but he fought anyway. He was hurt, but he protected others. And this one’s the kicker… he was outmatched, but he _almost won_. He was a kid, a boy really, but he was a man too, Spider-Man, to many of you. The world is worse off without him, by a mile. By a light-year. I can’t-” he chokes. The crowd is silent.

Tony steadies himself and holds up the little golden star that, if you plugged it in, would sing the songs that Peter loved. It’s the star whose sounds echoed against the facets of the jewel that was Peter Parker’s pure heart, and heard themselves reflected back in perfect harmony.

“I can’t say any more. I’ve said too much. All I meant was, he was a star to me.”

And he puts the star at the very top, flees back to his refuge, and finally finally cries.

The next day (Merry fuckin’ Christmas) Tony gets to work getting Peter, and everyone else, back.

\---

Six months later, on the longest, hottest day of the year, he figures the last obstacle out and takes a moment to himself before they go to put their plan in action. He pulls out the log book and writes:

_T11. Don’t Look Back in Anger – Oasis (1995)_

_“I'm gonna start a revolution from my bed 'cause you said the brains I had went to my head. Step outside 'cause summertime's in bloom. Stand up beside the fireplace, take that look from off your face 'cause you ain't ever gonna burn my heart out...”_


End file.
